Illegal OS

Today I bought a PC from a friend of mine (RAF) who is being posted abroad. (£35.00) Trouble is, the OS is an illegal copy of XP Pro. He gave me a System recovery disc for Win Millenium and said that this was originally on the PC. I`ve no problems about running this disc but he has asked me if he could save the photographs on the HDD. I want this PC for my Greatniece and I`d like to save his photos, so is there anyone out there who can help. All help is greatly appreciated.

In fact you have two jobs there since millenium is not gong to be supported by Microsoft from July 1st., so it is a choice between an old unsupported legal os and a unsupported ilegal os. As this comp is for someone else then I would buy a legal copy of XPhome but no doubt ms will stop supporting that too in a few years time.

An clean install will usually always leave you with a more stable machine with a nice lean registry, an upgrade install can lead to instability problems, I think if you ask any of the experts on the forum they would advise a clean install.

If you eventually want to have XP Home on the computer, then go for oem XP Home from somewhere like Ebuyer, and do a clean install. It will work out much cheaper and save time, going the upgrade route will achieve very little in the long term.